( South Africa Head Coach Shukri Conrad, PC- Subhayan Chakraborty)
South Africa head coach Shukri Conrad labelled the two-Test series against India as the biggest challenge of his coaching career. The Proteas will aim to continue their good run of form following a 1-1 drawn series in Pakistan. Whereas, India are coming on the back of a 2-0 series win against the West Indies.
“Look, India is one of the toughest challenges in the world and when you come to an iconic venue like Eden Gardens, it just makes it even tougher,” Conrad told reporters in Kolkata on Wednesday. “I don’t think you can compare the quality of the sides we played against, to India. And this will be our biggest challenge. Certainly in my 20-year career, I don’t think there’s been a bigger challenge. Yes, we had the WTC final against Australia that we won, which was massive.”
While South Africa have to face the challenge of the Indian spin quartet of Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav and Washington Sundar in the series, the Proteas will have Simon Harmer, Senuram Muthuswamy and Keshav Maharaj at their helm. The South African spin attack demolished the Pakistan batting unit in the recently concluded two-Test series. Simon Harmer (13 wickets in 2 Tests), Senuram Muthuswamy (11 in 2 Tests) and Keshav Maharaj (9 in 1 Test) have the required tools to trouble India as well.
“This is not saying that we didn’t have good spinners in the past, but we certainly think we’ve got a better pack of spinners now in Keshav, Simon and Sen,” Conrad said. “It gives us a lot of confidence that if the conditions are helping spinners, then we feel that we’ve got the armoury to obviously challenge India in that respect as well. Most of your batsmen have experience playing on the Indian soil, most of them have played in IPL. But we’re quietly confident that we can make history of our own here in Eden Gardens and in India.”
South Africa, after winning the last WTC, would be aiming to continue their march for their second consecutive appearance in the Test final. Though this is just the start of the new cycle, Conrad feels winning in India would silence a lot of critics.
“It’ll be great to get there again because everybody that said we didn’t deserve to get there previously, can now say maybe they do deserve to be in the big whatever number that is. But this is massive for us. We’ll be looking at delivering a performance that can make history for us. I can’t remember when we last won a Test match here or even a series, so that’s the biggest thing for us,” he said.
When quizzed about the Eden Gardens pitch, Conrad said, “I didn’t expect any different. My observation is that there will be something in it for the quick bowlers. It’s an early morning start. We practiced yesterday afternoon, late afternoon. We found that the ball started swinging. So there’s obviously, that might not be pitch related, but certainly overhead related,” the Proteas head coach said.
“And definitely it will spin. The question is always how early in the match does it spin. So, I think it’s pretty much stock standard. What’s out there, we expect it to look like that. So, I don’t think there are any demons. There’s nothing that will surprise us, or will surprise us, I should say.”
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